After months of waiting, speculation, and leaks, Google’s latest flagship offerings are finally here. Now, thanks to the leaks, we essentially knew what to expect but a few souls still held out hope for a few features. Google has started accepting pre orders and they will begin shipping devices later on this year with prices starting at $650 for the Pixel 2 and $850 for the Pixel 2 XL.

This is the second year running that the Mountain View giant has released their own devices as opposed to the previous run of Nexus devices but the company claims they have more control over the design and manufacturing process of the Pixel phones than they ever had with the Nexus smartphones and tablets. Google also announced a a new, smaller version of the Google Home as well as a new Chrome OS device called the Pixelbook.

Google Pixel 2 Features

Google announced a few new impressive features with these devices. We can expect a new and improved Pixel launcher that makes the Google search bar more accessible and introduce a new Google Assistant widget at the top. The camera also now sports a “Portrait Mode” that uses algorithms to focus on the main subject and blur out the rest in the background. We have seen this feature in almost all the latest flagship releases.

Adding to the camera features we see that they are adding some features we’ve seen previously from other manufacturers. Today, Google confirmed that its camera application has both a Face Retouching feature as well as a Motion Photo mode. The Face Retouching mode is known as Beauty Mode on Samsung devices for example and the Motion Photo mode is exactly the same as it is, again, on Samsung devices and also akin to Apple’s Live Photos where it will capture some video before and after taking a still photo.

With Pixel 2, you’ll get up to 7 hours of battery life from just a 15-minute charge. As Google said in their event, as the competition has increased all the flagships offer almost the same feature; Google will be focusing more on Software to increase user experience in Android.

Another feature that will instantly be one of those “love it or hate it” things is the new Now Playing feature where the phone listens for audio playing in the ambient surrounding area and then display details about it on the lock screen. Thankfully, this feature is not mandatory and can easily be turned off in the settings. Google claims that this is an offline feature and that none of the info will ever be sent to Google. Hopefully they’re telling the truth.

The company is even expanding their Ambient Display feature to include always-on display functionality that takes advantage of the OLED panels used in both the Google Pixel 2 as well as the Google Pixel 2 XL.

Googles website also claims “Pixel’s software and security updates will follow for three years”. This could mean that either we’ll see the standard minimum of two years of OS updates and one extra year of security patches, or three years of both OS updates and security patches. We hope it implies the latter, as that seems to be what this specific wording alludes to.

Pricing and Release Date

As expected, the Pixel 2 will cost $650 for the 64gb storage option and climb to $750 for the 128gb version. The Pixel 2 XL will cost a mere $850 for 64gb and a nonchalant $950 for the larger 128gb beast. Google says both versions of the Pixel 2 will ship by October 17th but Pixel 2 XL can be pre-ordered right now, with a free Google Home Mini with your Pixel 2 XL pre-order.

I guess it’s time to hit the bank up for a loan to get my hands on one if these bad boys!